Empirical Explorations of Guitar Players Attitudes Towards Their Equipment and the Role of Distortion in Rock Music

Empirical Explorations of Guitar Players Attitudes Towards Their Equipment and the Role of Distortion in Rock Music Jan-Peter Herbst Introduction The sound of the distorted electric guitar is widely considered a sonic trademark of most rock and metal music genres. As Robert Walser once claimed, the “most important aural sign of heavy metal is the sound of an extremely distorted electric guitar. Anytime this sound is musically dominant, the song is arguably either metal or hard rock; any performance that lacks it cannot be included in the genre” (1993, 41). Historically, the guitar and rock genre have been closely intertwined. From the early 1950s on, the solid-body electric guitar had been produced commercially and was already being played in blues, jazz, and Hawaiian music. Yet, it was the explosive emergence and international spreading of rock music that made the electric guitar popular throughout the Western world (Uimonen 2016, 2-3). In the history of popular music, the electric guitar’s diverse sounds created by numerous instrument models, amplifiers, overdrive and effects pedals became distinguishing features not only between rock and other genres (Gracyk 1996), but also between rock’s various subgenres and the multifaceted styles of metal (Berger and Fales 2005, 185; Cope 2010; Wallach, Berger, and Greene 2011). Musical instruments are closely connected with genres and subgenres (Théberge 1997, 198), and some equipment is better suited for a particular genre than other gear (Jones 1992, 83). Therefore, musicians have modi- fied instruments to their needs, as for example Edward Van Halen who famously altered his Marshall amplifier for higher distortion levels (Walser 1993, 43-44) and who built his ‘Frankenstrat’ in an attempt to combine the sounds and playing feels of two seminal guitar models, Gibson’s Les Paul and Fender’s Stratocaster (Obrecht 1978). Hence instruments and their individual sounds are of central importance for studying musical, cultural, and sociological aspects of rock music (Waksman 2003a). Théberge argued that “[m]usical instruments are often the centre of controversy in pop and rock because their use is so intimately tied with the musicians’ notions of personal expression” (2001, 13). Closer inspec- tion shows that despite popular music studies research having stressed Current Musicology No.105 (Fall 2019) © 2019 Herbst. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons-Attribution- 75 NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (CC BY-NC-ND). Current Musicology the general relevance of music technology, music production, and media- tized dissemination for rock music (Clarke 1983; Frith 1990; Jones 1992; Théberge 1997), scholars have payed less attention to the instruments involved (Waksman 2003a, 252). Similarly, the focus shifted from musicians to producers (Zak 2001; Moorefield 2010). Besides technological and production-related issues, popular music research has studied the electric guitar with regards to cultural identity and ethnicity (Waksman 1999), communication (Gracyk 1996), gender (Frith and McRobbie 1990; Walser 1993; Waksman 1999; Bourdage 2010), and fetishism (Uimonen 2016). Despite this wealth of literature, there is still a profound lack of aca- demic writing on what equipment rock guitar players choose to use and what goes into these choices. Clearly, many publications exist on famous rock guitarists from the 1960s and ’70s: Jimi Hendrix (Whiteley 1990; Waksman 1999), Eric Clapton (Brunning 2002), Jimmy Page (Tolinski 2012), Tony Iommi (Cope 2010), and Eddie Van Halen (Walser 1993; Waksman 2003b), plus a plethora of (auto-)biographies. All this work honors achievements and reminds us of the classic times in rock history (Grossberg 1992; Gracyk 1996). Furthermore, numerous texts exist about innovators like Lester William ‘Les Paul’ Polsfuss (Waksman 1999) and influential instrument or amplification manufacturers such as Jim Marshall (Maloof 2004). In contrast, little attention has been paid to the large number and variety of amateur, semi-professional, and professional guitar players that constitute the majority of today’s rock musicians. All these musicians continue to sustain genre traditions and develop rock music’s diverse subgenres, even if only in local, regional, or national scenes (Wallach, Berger, and Greene 2011). This article has its source in a larger empirical research project on the distorted guitar in rock music, which focuses on distortion’s effect on playability and expressiveness (Herbst 2016, 2017b, 2019c), its influences on chord perception, song-writing, and production (Herbst 2017a, 2017c, 2018, 2019b; Herbst, Czedik-Eysenberg, and Reuter 2018), and on issues around genre aesthetics (Herbst 2017, 2019a, 2020). While most work on rock music and guitar culture has studied recorded music or star personali- ties, this study follows an empirical mixed-methods design (Creswell 2003, 208-227) by combining a quantitative survey (N = 413) of amateur and semi-professional musicians with ten qualitative interviews with professional guitarists of various prominence. It explores guitar players’ attitudes towards equipment, based on the theoretically grounded assumption that the musicians’ use of equipment is strongly connected with genre conven- tions (Hicks 1990; Jones 1992; Walser 1993; Gracyk 1996; Théberge 1997; Berger and Fales 2005; Cope 2010). The following questions arise from the 76 Jan-Peter Herbst overarching research project and other rock and guitar literature: What are players’ attitudes toward sound quality, and how do they approach craft- ing a personal sound? To what extent are players concerned with pursuing traditional guitar sounds? With an empirical design, the study contributes multifaceted data on the rock guitar to popular music studies largely miss- ing so far. Method The study followed a sequential explanatory mixed-methods design (Creswell 2003, 208-227) using qualitative findings to complement quantitative results. Different approaches were combined to compensate for the weakness of each method and to come to a deeper understanding (Flick 2009, 23-34; 444). Procedure and Sample An online survey (included in the Appendix) generated the quantitative data. It was promoted on German-speaking online message boards.1 Forums in countries other than Germany, Austria, and Switzerland were not addressed since the survey was in German. The response rate was high; 413 out of 569 questionnaires (73%) were fully answered within three weeks of data collection between 24 August and 13 September 2015. 97% of the sample were male. The age spectrum was between 15 and 64 years. The two largest age groups were those from 25 to 29 (16%) and 20 to 24 (15%) years. Each of the five-year-groups between 30 and 54 had ap- proximately 12%. Least represented were the youngest (15 to 19 years, 3%) and oldest (55 to 59 years, 6%; 60 to 64 years, 3%) participants. Regarding the preferred genres played on the electric guitar (Figure 1), each respondent chose an average of 3.56 (SD = 1.82) out of 12 by multiple choice. Styles like blues, classic rock, and hard rock were generally favored; metal genres were less popular. The category ‘no rock and metal styles’ included styles commonly played without or with little distortion such as jazz, soul, funk, or reggae. A respondent’s selected genres were generally stylisti- cally close, for instance blues, classic rock, and hard rock; alternative rock, grunge, and punk; or all metal styles. The ‘other rock/metal styles’ were not clearly defined. However, since they were selected by participants who also favored extreme metal, metalcore, and nu metal, the ‘other rock/metal genres’ likely represented other ‘extreme’ styles of metal. 77 Current Musicology Figure 1. Participants’ preferred genres played on the electric guitar (N = 1,487); numbers in brackets represent absolute numbers As would be expected from the age structure of the sample, most participants played the guitar for many years. Most (58%) had 15 or more years of experience. A small number played less than a year (0.3%) or between one and three years (3%). The other groups were similar in size (4 to 6 years, 9%; 7 to 10 years, 14%; 11 to 15 years, 15%). Regarding expertise, only 12 persons (3%) considered themselves amateurs, 216 (54%) intermediates, 134 (34%) semi-professionals, and 38 (10%) professionals. Most participants were self-taught (43%). 35% had instrumental lessons, 5% had studied for a research-focused music degree, and 3% did a higher education course in music performance. Further 13% had private lessons or mentors in bands. The decisive criterion for differ- entiating expertise groups was level of formal education, which correlated significantly albeit with a weak effect (rs = .15; p < .01). All genres except for hard rock and grunge showed clear correlations with age (Table 1). Playing experience correlated positively with blues and the ‘no rock/metal’ styles, and negatively with alternative rock, punk, and all metal styles except for heavy metal. Expertise and genre only correlated negatively for punk (rs = −.11; p = .02) and positively for ‘no rock/metal styles’ (rs = .18; p < .001). By tendency, professionals were less fond of playing metal genres. Interviewing internationally renowned artists can be difficult because contact details are not publicly available, or requests do not get past their management. For this study, it was not possible to recruit enough professional guitarists from Germany with an international

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